5 Business Website Items You’re Doing Wrong

Spring is in the air and it’s time to start reviewing your website to make sure it’s actually working for your small business.

Here’s a list of 5 things you could be doing wrong with your website.

Overthinking every little thing on your website.

Here’s the thing, the details are often what makes your site stand out. The problem comes when you’re overthinking it to the point of not launching (aka, making money in your business).

Here are a few places you could be thinking too deeply about this:

1. Colors

2. Fonts

3. Images

4. Text/Copy

I can already hear you saying it: “...but Yasmine you said these are important in your other videos…”

They are. To a certain point.

If you find that you’re 3 months behind your launch and that you’re struggling between the shade of green in your color scheme, it’s time to make a decision and go with it. From my experience, clients struggle with making a decision because they actually don’t know themselves or their target market. They don’t know if their text should be excited and casual or buttoned up. They just feel lost and the project takes 3 times as long.

As a DIY small business owner, your website can become a nightmare when it comes to launching on time because you don’t have the guidance of a designer. 

Here’s what you do:

Go back to your target market, do some research, and make a choice. Live with that choice for about 6 months and only then evaluate how your visuals are going.

Because here’s the secret: Even an ugly site can make you money when there’s an emotional connection to your client.

About page copy on your website isn’t about YOU.

Wait. What?

You read that right. The about page has absolutely nothing to do with you. In reality it’s a way to give your audience a peak at who you are while still explaining why your experience and passion are going to help them solve their problems.

Here are a few signs that your about page needs to be reworked:

1. You have your resume on there. Either legit uploaded or copied.

2. You’ve got your resume “reworded” on your about page. Even if the client needs to see credentials, don’t make it look like it’s a resume.

3. The words used on the about page are all about you. Nowhere do you talk about how your passion will help your target market. For example, if you’ve been passionate about jewelry design since childhood, how does that help you create custom pieces for your clients.

How do you fix it?

Read through each section on your about page and ask yourself, why is this important to my website visitor, and what value did they get out of this?

Are you mixing up features and benefits on your website?

I see this A LOT and even fall prey to it myself. When it comes to showcasing what you do for clients, make sure that you’re not mixing up the features and benefits of your service. You also want to be aware of which should be more important to your user (psst: often, it’s the benefits).

Features are the things we can almost cross off a check-list. For example, a workbook or weekly calls with your life coach. 

Benefits are the emotional things we get. For example, confidence to stand up in a crowd and give a talk without being a deer in the headlights.

One example is lash extensions. They don’t just make your eyelashes look longer and fuller (a feature), they also give you the confidence to walk out the door without worrying so much about how you look (benefit).

Not using your testimonials to their full potential on your website.

I get really excited when clients have been gathering testimonials because not only do they add content but they also provide social proof on the site.

Most people will not use testimonials appropriately, though.

For example, they believe that only having a testimonial page is sufficient. It’s not. Although it’s a great first step, there are a lot more that testimonials can support with.

Here are some places you can reuse those same testimonials:

1. Sales or landing pages on your website.

2. Home page

3. About page

4. Contact page

5. Pages where you mention how awesome you are

6. Footer

Pretty much anywhere that you have been talking about how amazing you are.

Here are a few ways to take the testimonials on your website up a notch:

1. Video recording of the testimonial.

2. A headshot of the person.

3. A name (versus “Happy Client”)

Think of testimonials like sprinkles. You want those to be all over the cake, not just in one area.

Misusing the navigation on your website.

One sign of a DIY website is when you mess up the navigation. Other than your call to action buttons, this is how your user will navigate the site and you want to make sure it’s clear and gets them to their ultimate goal.

Here are the common navigation mistakes on a website.

1. Using SHOP as one of the options. If you’re an e-commerce business, you should never use the SHOP tab. Instead, you need to pull out the top categories and place those front and center.

2. Putting pages of little importance on the top navigation. It depends on your type of business but for e-commerce, these include, About, Contact, FAQs, etc. A service-based business doesn’t need Testimonials, FAQs, etc up on the top. Think of your user’s goal and the pages that don’t support will go in the footer.

3. Not using a mega menu. This one depends on your tech skills but a mega menu is great for displaying lots of categories or pages. This is especially great for e-commerce websites.

4. Using more than one word on the page navigation link when unnecessary. This is ABOUT versus ABOUT ME. 

5. Using words that are too cute that I have no idea what I’m going to click on.

That’s it for today. Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever made any of these mistakes and how you fixed them. Until next time!